I have read about Daisy :cry*ing:and all the other Cavaliers going through this battle of SM. I know Riley and Ella are in the US and it seems like they are on similar medication. I have never heard of furosemide or metacam. Does it seem to help? Is it realivily new? Is it something that they do not give in the US? The reason I am asking is that even though Ella is doing better, she is has been scratching and shaking her head some. I am just a worry wort and want to know as much information as possible. Ella is on 100 mg of gabapentin 2 times a day. 25 mg tramadol 2 times a day, 20 mg prilosec once a day. I can give her an extra dose of the tramadol and gabapentin as needed and add prednisone if she is having a bad episode. I don't think I need to switch her medication but I'm just curious. I feel sorry for all of these dogs.

sins

24th July 2010, 02:36 PM

Apologies in advance for my brief reply,Just rushing out!
Furosemide is a diuretic, very common drug.
Metacam is a very old antiinflammatory, it's also called Meloxicam and it's marketed in Europe under the name Mobic for humans. I've taken that myself and it's brilliant.
Sins

Margaret C

25th July 2010, 07:47 PM

I have read about Daisy :cry*ing:and all the other Cavaliers going through this battle of SM. I know Riley and Ella are in the US and it seems like they are on similar medication. I have never heard of furosemide or metacam. Does it seem to help? Is it realivily new? Is it something that they do not give in the US? The reason I am asking is that even though Ella is doing better, she is has been scratching and shaking her head some. I am just a worry wort and want to know as much information as possible. Ella is on 100 mg of gabapentin 2 times a day. 25 mg tramadol 2 times a day, 20 mg prilosec once a day. I can give her an extra dose of the tramadol and gabapentin as needed and add prednisone if she is having a bad episode. I don't think I need to switch her medication but I'm just curious. I feel sorry for all of these dogs.

Just to say that many owners have found that gabapentin seems to be most effective if it is given three times a day. They notice the symptoms tend to reappear if there is a greater gap than 8 hours between tablets.

Metacam, which a very common veterinary painkiller in the UK, was the first drug used when William started crying a little about 4 years ago. Metacam & frusemide, a common diurectic, seem to keep him comfortable.

Tommy had just frusemide when he had very mild symptoms, then metacam was added.
We went on to gabapentin, but stopped the metacam, as he displayed more symptoms. Later we needed to add metacam again.

I am now feeling vaguely uneasy about his level of comfort and I suspect it is time to reassess what we are doing.

Karlin

25th July 2010, 07:56 PM

Frusimide (furosemide in the US) has the same basic function as prilosec (omeprazole) for SM -- but some dogs are better on cimetidine, frusomide, or another CSF inhibitor while others do best on prilosec. Prilosec seems to make some dogs feel ill though but is fine with others. You could ask to try cimetidine or frusimide. The hassle with frusimide is that it is a diuretic and causes them to pee and often pee on themselves initially til they realise they need to hold themselves. Generally you give it and then need to let the dog relieve itself about 30 minutes later and maybe 30 minutes again after that. I use cimetidine. (a lot of us eventually will have cavaliers on frusimide though as it is one of the main drugs given when they go into congestive heart failure from MVD. For many years, this may have masked the extent to which older cavaliers were showing signs of SM...).

Metacam is far milder a painkiller than tramadol. Tramadol is much much stronger. Tramadol wiped Leo out so that he could hardly walk and was very woozy for hours, so I have that just as emergency backupin case of a pain session and use Metacam every day now. But a dog with more severe pain would def need something stronger -- Metacam would not be strong enough. If you download Clare Rusbridge's treatment diagram you can see the names of the recommended drugs but there are others in the same families that some prefer to prescribe.

Meds often need a lot of fine-tuning to get them right, according to Clare Rusbridge. I'd echo Margaret's comments of frequency of gabapentin -- Leo starts to scratch around the 8 hour limit.

*Pauline*

25th July 2010, 10:10 PM

Just to say that many owners have found that gabapentin seems to be most effective if it is given three times a day.

This is what I was going to say, you could increase Ella's dose to 100mg three times a day on the approval of your neuro or vet.

anniemac

26th July 2010, 11:28 PM

Thank you for the information and I hope that you little ones are feeling better